


soon love soon (we will be as one)

by betony



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short fics about the backstories of various characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. illumination in unnatural light

**Author's Note:**

> Title and chapter headings after Vienna Teng's "Soon Love Soon."

It storms that night in Resembool, so terribly that Trisha actually considers going up to the Rockbells’ to wait it out. 

She doesn’t, of course, because if there is one thing she has learned over the last eight years, it’s that she shouldn’t depend more on Pinako, Urey, and Sara’s generosity than she can help. Trisha Elric knows deep in her soul that she can take care of herself, and she intends to prove it to the world. 

Just as she thinks that, as if to challenge her hubris, there’s a knock on the front door. Trisha jumps, despite herself. She wasn’t expecting any visitors, and even if she were, she doubts anyone would have kept the appointment in such weather. No, if anything, it’s a traveler surprised by the storm, and in that case, Trisha decides the least she can do for them is let them dry off until the worst of the weather has passed. There’s always her mother’s collection of kitchen knives to use if she needs to defend herself, she reasons, and surely it can’t hurt to make sure if the person at the door isn’t in some sort of trouble before she leaves them to the mercy of the weather. 

She sucks in a breath and opens the door. 

There’s a great golden-haired lion of a man standing there, framed in lightning and clutching a battered suitcase in one hand. He looks familiar, but Trisha can’t put a name to a face, not now, when there’s the question of how much, if any, danger this man might pose to answer first. “Yes?” she says, keeping one hand on the doorknob just in case. 

“What year is it?” The man asks, shifting his suitcase from one hand to the other nervously. 

“Hm?” Trisha replies, biting back her first instinct, which is to ask him why in the world he doesn’t know something as simple as the year, for heaven’s sake. “1897. It’s 1897.” 

The stranger’s stern face relaxes into a surprisingly self-deprecating smile and with that, recollection sparks in Trisha’s mind. _Hohenheim_ , she thinks, one of Pinako’s friends who Urey and Trisha had met years and years ago. At the time, Trisha hadn’t found him very interesting at all, thinking him too grown-up and gloomy, but now, with the passage of years, he seems surprisingly more approachable. 

“1897,” he repeats. “I’m a year and a half late for the wedding. Pinako will kill me.” 

“The wedding? Oh, you mean Urey’s and Sara’s. You did miss it, Mr. Hohenheim, it was wonderful.” Tactfully she doesn’t comment on what Pinako’s reaction at his appearance will be, but privately Trisha suspects he’s not far off the mark. And serves him right, too; Pinako had wanted so badly for everyone to be there to share in her son’s joy. 

“Well,” he says, and chuckles a little ruefully. “Well.” 

And Trisha is old enough, and wise enough, to know better, but it’s storming terribly and he has nowhere to go and he seems so _lost_ that she can’t help but say, “Why don’t you warm up by the fire for tonight? I’ll walk you up to Pinako’s in the morning. But,” and she frowns as ferociously as she can, because lost and rainsoaked and pitiful aside, Trisha Elric is no fool, “you’ll be sleeping on the couch, mind.” 

Hohenheim smiles at her nevertheless as he nods his acceptance. She steps aside and lets him in.


	2. such a wide, wide chasm of faith to leap

On the seventh full moon of the Year of the Tiger, news comes to the Yao compound of the birth of the Emperor’s newest child, a daughter. The birth occurred a full year back, but the Yaos are out of favor with the Imperial Court at the moment, and so any word from the Emperor comes only grudgingly .At five, Ling Yao does not comprehend exactly why his mother and her siblings wail at the news, but he understands enough about what it means to have yet another competitor for the throne of Xing ( _for his father’s affections_ ) that he wrestles out of his nurse’s hold before she can stop him and storms away into the gardens. 

Lan Fan is the one who finds him at the lakeside where he broods. Despite her youth, she is still Grandfather Fu’s choice over her many cousins to serve as the Yao Prince’s personal bodyguard; the responsibility wears heavier on her than she admits. Prince Ling has never bothered to say a word to her or any of her omnipresent masked relatives ever before, but no more has she dared to speak to him or any of the other Imperial Yaos. 

Until today. 

Lan Fan clears her throat, and the sound startles Ling out of his sulk. “Young Lord,” she says, and her voice is hoarse but audible. Ling stares up at her, wide-eyed. “Bao had more news to give. The newest Imperial Princess—she’s only a _Chang_.” 

Ling should tell himself: _only a Chang? That’s no threat to my throne._

Instead he thinks: _behind her mask, surely she must be smiling._

He beams at her, and Lan Fan is lost.


	3. fire burning in the temple of our peace

Just like the year before, in 1906 Roy Mustang accompanies his teacher’s daughter to the Eastern Amestris State Fair. Just like the year before, she enters the shooting contest that starts off the festivities; unlike last year, however, she beats out all other competitors to take first prize rather than second, beginning a legendary five-year series of wins. Also unlike the past year, this time Roy stays to explore the rest of the fair with her afterwards instead of going back home to study as soon as the results are announced. 

Riza insists that the bulk of her 50,000 cenz prize must go towards household necessities, but she carefully counts out enough to spend on sweets and a few rides. When they approach the games, though, the barkers refuse to accept Riza’s tickets. 

“It’d be an unfair advantage, sweetheart, letting our new marksmanship champion have a go,” explains one kindly, “but that doesn’t mean your boyfriend here can’t win you something.” 

So that is how Roy finds himself throwing a ball at a pyramid of milk bottles again and again, only to find that contrary to all expectations, he misses his target by a wider margin every time. His aim is not improved by Riza’s valiant attempts to smother her laughter, any more than it is by his uncomfortable suspicions that her opinion of his skills matters rather more to him than he wants it to. After he comes close to taking off the barker’s head with a particularly bad throw, Riza takes pity on him at last and corrects his posture, her hands warm on his back. (He still doesn’t win anything, but at least he comes closer that time.) 

His sisters would consider that a pathetic date. Roy, who remembers the sparkle in Riza’s eyes as they walked back home together even years later, can’t help thinking it wasn’t half bad as a first one.


	4. travel a thousand miles

The first and last time Olivier Armstrong will ever admit to feeling nervous is the instant the train pulls to a stop. 

She has chosen her talismans well, though, with the deliberation she accords everything. Her sword hangs against her hip, and that is a comfort. It is proof, of what she has already won; and promise, of what she will win in the years to come. Her ticket is still clutched in her hand: the oh-seven-hundred from Central to North, one way only, and that is a comfort too. That is a reminder that there is no going back from here, no fleeing this battlefield, whatever she might feel. Olivier won’t allow it. 

The only one there to collect her is a tall man with his hair in a long braid and an automail arm. All he does when he sees her is grunt and bends to reach for her suitcase. A more romantic woman might feel disappointed. The stupid adventure novels that sell in Central’s newstands might tout the immediate camaraderie between fellow soliders, but Olivier is no fool; she knows full well a leader gains loyalty by her actions and her actions alone and it's time she started proving her worth. 

Olivier shoves his hand aside and picks up the suitcase herself. 

“That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant,” she barks. She thinks she sees him raise his eyebrows in surprise before shrugging a little; without taking the time to see if he follows, Olivier makes for the exit. 

Her destiny lies open and unwritten before her, after all, and Briggs is done waiting.


	5. to be a part is to be truly whole

When Elysia Hughes sits up in a high chair for the first time, her father is there to document this milestone with a photograph (and then take a couple of dozen more, just to show off to his best friend.) Beside him, his wife laughs. 

“Roy won’t be happy,” Gracia warns him. “I think he reached his saturation point when you showed him those two rolls from Elysia’s first doctor's visit last night. Didn’t he say he was going to melt your camera if he had to see another photograph while he was here in Central?” 

Hughes scoffs. “Roy complains too much— not to mention that he’s a damn hypocrite. Did you know, he had the nerve to lecture me earlier, all ‘You’re too overprotective, Hughes’ and ‘Elysia won’t have the chance to learn if you keep on taking care of her problems for her’ but then—but we don’t ever listen to cranky Uncle Roy, do we, Elysia? Of course we don’t!” 

At this point, the conversation descends into unintelligible crooning, something Gracia—already accustomed to this behavior, bless her—calmly interrupts. 

“Then?” 

“Then Riza called from East City to tell him Fuery’s leave time hadn’t been approved, and off Roy ran to Central Command to push it past the higher-ups. ‘Too overprotective,’ my--” Hughes breaks off and considers Elysia “—something Daddy’s little princess should never repeat. Ever.” 

Gracia shakes her head, chuckling again. “It’s not as though you don’t provoke him terribly, Maes…” 

“He’s just jealous,” Hughes says sagely, “that he’s not married to the love of his life and father of the most perfect little girl in the universe and the luckiest man possible—“ 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gracia replies, and there’s a twinkle in her eyes he knows and loves well, “I think you might get luckier still.”


	6. hold our broken circle and begin to pray

“Hurry up, girl,” Dominic snaps. “I don’t have all day.” 

Paninya wants to say something snarky back—and she _would_ , honest, if it didn’t take every ounce of concentration to keep standing up. 

“Stop looking like you think they’re going to fall off,” Dominic says again. “That’s my work you’re wearing. Best you’ll ever find.” 

“I know!” Paninya bawls back, because it’s easier than wondering what would happen if her new automail legs did fall off. “You’ve only mentioned that a thousand times!” 

Dominic glowers. “If I have, then it should have sunk in by now!” 

They glare at each other, and then subside, because although they might be worlds apart, mechanical genius and street urchin, here in this moment, at 12:15 by the rickety clock over the nurse’s station, they are both utterly terrified. 

Quite contrary to anything she might have expected, the thought gives her courage. Paninya sucks in a breath and takes her second set of first steps. 

She doesn’t tumble over, of course. She doesn’t, because Dominic blusters and rages and brags, but he’s right when he says he’s the best there is. Behind her, she hears him let out a long shuddering sigh, and then he laughs, sinking back into his chair with a thud. 

Paninya thinks: _I will never be able to repay this man._

But worrying about that can come tomorrow. Today all that matters is that Paninya can _run_ again.


End file.
